4 april

International partners have considered Russia’s stance on the settlement in Syria more after the visit of French President Francois Hollande to Russia, Russian presidential aide Yury Ushakov said.
”It seems to me that after the visit of the French President, international efforts to find a compromise [regarding Syria] intensified, in particular with more consideration of the Russian views and Russian positions, as we see it,” Ushakov told reporters at a briefing in Moscow on the eve of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visits to Germany and the Netherlands.
At the same time, ”there are no concrete ways out from the existing situation yet,” Ushakov said.

Is there a connection between events in Syria (maybe even US tension with North Korea) and Russia’s impromptu Black Sea war games that started on March 28, 2013?
While on his way from Durban in South Africa, where the BRICS — Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa — announced they were forming a new development bank to challenge the IMF and World Bank, Russia’s Vladimir Putin gave the go ahead for unscheduled war games in the Black Sea. By themselves the games mean little, but in a global context they mean a lot.